Surplus of hotel bargains online
By Jen Leo
Special to the Los Angeles Times
Is it possible to travel during a recession? Absolutely. Finding a deal just becomes a greater necessity.
Dealbase.com puts a fresh spin on hotel bargains. Not only do you discover hotel rates with added value and discounts but you also save the time you would have spent digging them up yourself.
What's hot: Thousands of hotel deals at your fingertips. Destinations favor the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean, but there are growing lists in Canada and Europe. DealBase is easy to browse, and you can search for hotel deals by city and thematic tags. After you choose a link, you can sort the results by percentage savings, highest or lowest rate, most recently edited or expiring soon. Click on the hotel deal and find out how DealBase analyzes the deal, which includes a calculation of savings. When you're ready to book, you're sent to the source of the deal. Just window shopping? Click on the heart near the deal's price to compare all your selections later in "My Favorites."
What's not: The edit feature. What's to stop one hotel or mischievous person from changing the price on a competing hotel? The good news is that at the bottom of the individual deal page, you can also get information on how old the deal is and have a look at its history if you are concerned about recent edits. This should assuage most concerns about the deal. Another structural drawback: If you search for a deal by a tag, such as "Romance," there's no option to sort it by destination afterward. You have to look at each one to figure out where it is.
